Homes flattened by air strikes. Boys killed by discarded cluster bombs. Babies dying in incubators. This is Yemen in 2016. MEE sent Peter Oborne to survey the devastation

Editor's Note: Award-winning journalist Peter Oborne and Middle East Eye's Nawal Al-Maghafi are among the few correspondents to have ventured into war-torn Yemen during the past month. In the first of a series of exclusive reports, they survey the devastation and reveal the culpability of the West for the carnage that is unfolding on a daily basis. Much of their reporting is from Houthi-held territory, where they were accompanied, and their interviews monitored, by Houthi minders. We are, however, confident that what they were told by their interviewees is authentic.

SANAA - The humanitarian calamity in Yemen entered a terrifying new phase of horror this month as air strikes on the capital city of Sanaa started again after a five-month lull.

Planes from the Saudi-led coalition bombarded the city following the collapse of peace talks in Kuwait. The assaults are destroying civilian infrastructure, and threaten to prevent food and desperately needed aid from reaching the capital.

A young girl undergoes hospital treatment in Sadaa (Mohammed Al-Mikhlafi/MEE)

Many of the attacks seem to have been indiscriminate. At least 16 people, all of them said to have been women and children, died when a potato crisp factory was struck.

The nearest military post was more than one kilometre away and a friend of the owner told us that there was no military activity on the site.

The strikes also targeted the Red Sea port of Hodeida and elsewhere across Yemen. Much of the country is already threatened with starvation.

The renewal of the air assault, and fresh evidence of the killing of civilians, will open Britain and the United States to fresh charges that they have been complicit in alleged Saudi war crimes and atrocities.

The two countries have supported the Saudi-led coalition since the start of the war 18 months ago – but the British Foreign Office has repeatedly denied that Saudi Arabia has been guilty of breaches of humanitarian law.